The Tudors

The Tudors

ram and I have avidly been watching The Tudors on BBC1 on Friday evenings. This is another very good example of how we don't plan lessons in advance, but how autonomous home educating parents do some preparation and facilitation to help learning happen.

After the series started I noticed in The Book People's catalogue a set of 10 books called A Very Short Introduction:British History. So I ordered that and also A Very Short Introduction to Warfare.

I am not reading these to Ram at the moment, but I have them in the bathroom in my reading basket. I have been reading the one about the Tudors while the series has been running. Sometimes I read a bit out to Ram if he is in the bathroom with me, other times I just save the information for later discussion.

I know that people have said that The Tudors are not historically accurate, but we have used that too for learning. I checked out the Wikipedia page on it for the inaccuracies and that too became part of the discussions as we talked about why they changed things about.

I know that some might think that the sex in The Tudors might not make it a good choice of programme for an 11 year old. Choosing what Ram can and cannot watch started some time ago when he saw the adverts for The Matrix and wanted to watch it. I knew that Dxh had seen it and I had made a judgement about the film from the figure of the leather clad Trinity on top of his TV!

But rather than saying no to Ram, we decided to discuss with with Dxh, especially as he had seen it and I hadn't. Dxh assured me that there wasn't any kinky sex in it, which I had assumed, and although there was some violence, it was very stylised and he felt that Ram could handle it.

In discussing it with some friends one of them said something that has always stuck with me. She said it is strange how we don't want our children to grow up killing people, and yet we let them watch violence, but we do want them to grow up to make love, and yet we stop them from watching films with sex in it!

In the end Ram did watch The Matrix and I am really glad I didn't try to stop him, because for him it was a very important film. It wasn't the violence that interested him, it was the thought that this world might just be an illusion! From there we got onto some pretty heavy philosophy.

So when the Tudors came along, I decided that as I wanted him to have relationships with women, and because I know that people on the spectrum often have difficulties with relationships and sex, and because the only sex he sees around here are the ponies and sheep on the farm, I let him watch it. Again I am glad that he did. The sex wasn't embarrassing for him, as it would be for some young people, and I felt that it was appropriate sex.

And as the last episode closed he learned what coitus interruptus is. A very important lesson!